Dyson's Inktober & Mapvember

[Dyson Logos]

Hey folks, it has been almost a year since I was here last, but this year I'm combining #Inktober with #Mapvember and aiming to draw/ink 61 maps in 61 days. And that reminded me that I chronicled my Mapvember progress on here last year, so I thought I should try it again!

#Inktober2017 - Map #01 - "Swift"

I need a map for the "Heart of Darkling" series I'm posting every month, so here's another location along the Darkling river - the Swiftwater Monastery.

This map is almost a full legal sized page in size. If I'm going to make it through Inktober & Mapvember, I've got to remind myself that it is ok to draw nice small maps too.

inktober-01-swiftwaters-monastery.jpg

[Dyson Logos]

#Inktober2017 - Map #02 - "Divided"

Like yesterday's map, this one was heavily influenced by what I need - which is another map for the "My Private Jakalla" megadungeon project (last month had me so floored with work that I fell behind on the maps for posting to the blog in October).

So the focus on this map is a massive hall that is partially collapsed and flooded that breaks this map region into two different areas. From the edge of one of the two galleries looking down into the flooded hall, you can just barely make out the other one under most dungeoneering light (there's a 60 foot gap between them).

inktober-02-the-divide.jpg

[Dyson Logos]

#Inktober2017 - Map #03 - "Poison"

For today's prompt, I went with the tower/house of an assassin who specializes in poisons & venoms. The structure contains large window boxes for growing poisonous plants (and a few pretty and harmless flowers that the poisoner just enjoys looking at and nurturing), some lab space to work on the poisoner's craft, and the usual things you'd expect to find in an odd home (bedroom, study, secret basement with even secreter basement with a nice sturdy locking closet for keeping people against their will, or for locking yourself into to pretend to be someone needing rescue, etc.)

I don't often say this about my work, but I love this map. This map looks good. It is the level of map that I would want to buy when writing an adventure. I'm proud of this piece.

inktober-03-the-poisoners-tower.jpg

[Dyson Logos]

#Inktober2017 - Map 04 - "Underwater"

Based on an adventure I've been running (but totally a different floor plan than the actual shipwreck the adventure has been using) we have the wreck of the pirate sloop "the Wight's Shadow".

Because once you get magic to breathe underwater, exploring shipwrecks seems like a natural next step.

Now I need to start practicing my hand-lettering.

inktober-04-wreck-of-the-wights-shadow.jpg

[ChickPea]

Wow, I salute you! You're off to a fantastic start.

[Arivinah]

I agree. These all look amazing!

[Dyson Logos]

#Inktober2017 - Map 05 - "Long"

One thing you saw in a number of classic D&D adventure modules were crazy long hallways to break parts of the dungeon apart. Part of it was so we could have more wandering monsters. Part of it was so the rest of the place wouldn't rise up when adventurers noisily executed the guys in room 3. And part of it was so you could slip in the occasional sloping passage so characters wouldn't realize they had transitioned between dungeon levels (and thus difficulty levels).

Today's inktober map is on a legal (8.5 x 14) page to give me more room for those long passages that stretch 200 to 300 feet.

inktober-05-srubeks-halls.jpg

[Dyson Logos]

#Inktober2017 - Map 06 - "Sword"

They call it "The Strike", the place where a massive longsword of a magical material sits embedded in the stone, surrounded by a small crater. Over the years a small church and a few buildings have been built up around the strike, and a temple dug underground where the faint glow of the magical material can be seen. Some come down here to establish their vows as paladins, others to take in the essence of the blade to supposedly increase their martial prowess.

(Not really happy with this one in execution, but love it in concept)

inktober-06-the-strike.jpg

[Mouse]

I really like the way you make ordinary square rooms look interesting just by twisting the corridors to change the angle in map 5.

Map 6 is amazingly well conceived, and very well drawn

[Dyson Logos]

#Inktober2017 - Map 07 - "Shy"

I caught a mental block on the cue for the first hour that I stared at it, with my various papers and pens laid out about me waiting for that next map to show up.

Then the marmoset savant came calling. The marmoset savant is a recurring low-level NPC wizard from an old campaign. 8 times out of 10, when the party needed to pick up some new information or were heading in exactly the wrong direction, they would come across a jumbled collection of blocks that had been converted into the marmoset savants' latest home.

A shy little bearded marmoset, he would have to be lured out of his blocks with interesting trinkets, new magics, or exotic nuts.

So here's the latest lair of the marmoset savant.

inktober-07-home-of-the-marmoset-savant.jpg